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The Latest Long Term Care Statistics – 2019 Update

December 23, 2019 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

Christine Benz updates her “Must-Know Statistics About Long-Term Care” report every year and the newest LTC information is now available. She is a Personal Finance Director at Morningstar and these annual reports are packed with invaluable long term care statistics. We’re so grateful to her for this!

No stranger to the value of long term care, Benz openly shares about her obsession (her words!). Both of her parents required it later in their lives. Even though her parents had the funds to pay for their LTC, “… it was still a terribly hard process for them, my siblings, and me.”

Ms. Benz’s statistics cover a broad spectrum. If you click on the link to the report, you’ll find that each statistic is linked to the underlying research.

Some Interesting Long Term Care Statistics

How long will we actually use our long term care coverage?

Women will need more LTC than men.
48% of us will likely need LTC for less than a year.
21% of us will likely need LTC for 2-5 years.
13% of will will need LTC for more than 5 years.

She shows us who and at what age people will need LTC, and how long they’ll need LTC coverage. Women will need more LTC than men. Although 48% of us will need LTC for less than a year, 21% of us will need LTC for 2 – 5 years and 13% of us will need LTC for more than five years.

The Dementia Factor

38% of Americans over the age of 85 have Alzheimer’s disease.
64% of those afflicted are women.
From 2000 – 2017, Alzheimer’s-related deaths rose by 145% (deaths from heart disease decreased by 9% over the same period).

The Costs of Long Term Care

LTC costs rose dramatically between 2000 and 2015. They’re now more than $208 billion/year.
51% of LTC costs were paid by Medicaid
The estimated lifetime cost of caring for a dementia patient is $350,174.
The median annual cost of living in a nursing home is $102,200 (depending on geographic location and facility amenities offered).

Statistics on the Unpaid Caregiver

34.2 million people provided unpaid care to someone 50 years or older during the past 12 months.
Over 75% of these unpaid caregivers are women.
The average age of these unpaid caregivers is 49.2, while 34% are 65 or older.
70% of caregivers experience work-related challenges due to their caregiving responsibilities.
If they are able to maintain their paying jobs, they report spending an additional 34.7 hours each week providing unpaid care.

Maintaining Your Independence

In light of the ever-increasing costs of long term care along with the increasing age of the U.S. population, the ability to afford effective medical care is more important than ever. Instead of relying on family or friends, consider the possibility of hiring trained professionals for your care. You can move into a safe, comfortable environment or receive regular visits in your own home.

Click here to receive a free, no-obligation quote for your own LTCi coverage. It’s a great time to learn what options are available to you in the future with just a little planning today.

How Good Food Can Help Your Finances

September 24, 2019 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

While researching the value of nutrition on our long term care benefits (“Eating for Life — An LTCi Benefit“), I came across a powerful infographic. There was so much important information in that image, I decided it needed its own blog post. I want to highlight all the great points made.

Many people spend their time and energy looking to solve their health issues with multiple prescriptions. But some of the easiest answers can be found in the foods we eat on a regular basis.

The Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University has launched a Public Impact Initiative to address the “nutrition crisis” found across our nation. They are bringing the full power of their research to help create awareness and change. They are targeting farming programs, school lunch offerings, the military and many other stakeholders in the healthcare sector.

Food Is Medicine

The image below starts with the 10 foods that cause nearly half of U.S. deaths (heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes) each year.

Eating too much: sodium, processed meat, sugary beverages, and unprocessed red meat
Eating too little: nuts & seeds, seafood Omega-3, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and polyunsaturated fats

The Public Initiative aims to save lives and also reduce the skyrocketing costs of healthcare.

LTCi benefit

Workplace Strategies

Reducing employee health risks (like high blood pressure and sugar levels) by only 1% can save employers $83 to $103 each year.
Wellness programs lower medical costs by $3.27 for every $1.00 spent

Lower Income Families

Increasing intake of fruits & vegetables of all SNAP recipients will save $6.77 billion over a lifetime.

Healthcare System

Increasing intake of fruit & vegetables by Medicaid and Medicare participants could prevent almost 2 million cardiovascular disease incidents and save over $40 billion in healthcare costs.
Treating diabetes by providing free fresh food lowers the risk of death or other complications by 40%.
Increasing the amount of whole grains, nuts, fish, and plant-based oils in our diets can prevent 3.31 million cardiovascular disease events. This could save over $102 billion in healthcare costs.

The LTCi Benefit

Here’s the bonus! While we’re enjoying all of this delicious, nutritious food, we’re feeling the incredible benefits in our bodies. We’re also living longer lives with significantly better health. This lowers our own cost of healthcare.

In addition, this preserves the value of your long term care insurance policy, allowing it to grow in value for a longer period of time. When you finally need to start receiving payments, you will have a deeper well to draw from. This gives you access to a wider variety of care options and a higher quality of life in your later years.

Click here to receive a free, no-obligation quote for your own LTCi policy.

Medicaid’s Woes Highlighted

October 14, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

This past month I’ve come across a few articles describing Medicaid’s woes, and highlighting peoples need to plan for funding their own long-term care, now!

This Washington Post story describes why our system is incentivized to discharge patients when they are still very needy, but their Medicare-paid re-hab benefits are exhausted. Medicaid can then often pick up costs, but it pays facilities poorly. This incentivizes facilities to admit the least needful and costly patients. In addition, “The Medicaid system is overly cumbersome and too slow to provide benefits.”

The true heroines of long-term care, paid home care providers, earn an average of $10.11 an hour, states this September New York Times article. About a third of these caregivers rely on food stamps and 28% rely on Medicaid for health insurance. Annual caregiver job turnover rate is 40-60 percent.

The article continues by stating caregivers at Medicaid-funded facilities got their pay raised to minimum wage: $7.15 per hour last year. Such caregivers are often overwhelmed with the sheer number of patients they must care for. “Ms. Walker left her job at a nearby nursing home because “sometimes you had 12 to 15 people to take care of,” she said. “You’re trying to feed everybody, give them baths, but a lot of people got neglected.”

This testimonial about Medicaid’s flaws on the receiving end of care is heart-wrenching, “When Roy Potter was weakened from postpolio syndrome and his wife, Joan, could no longer help him out of bed, a nursing home was “unthinkable,” said Ms. Potter, 83.

For a year, they paid private aides $14 an hour to come to their home in Mount Kisco, N.Y. When they could no longer afford that, Mr. Potter qualified for Medicaid, which pays the preponderance of home care costs in this country.

Over the next two and a half years, more than a dozen agency aides — some caring and competent; some not; some disappearing without explanation — cycled through their home, as did a number of short-term substitutes.

“A new person would come, and I’d have to walk them through everything all over again,” Ms. Potter said.

She grew increasingly anxious about whether an aide would show up. “Every morning I’d hold my breath until the doorbell rang,” she said. “Several times, I had to get in the car and drive to the agency and say, ‘Who is coming today?’”

Last year, when federal overtime provisions took effect, the agency cut back helpers’ hours.

She and her children succeeded in keeping Mr. Potter at home until he died in April, at 86, but finding and keeping help proved a continual battle.

One in Five Nursing Home Residents Report Abuse

June 20, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

A new study reports one in five – or about 20% of nursing home residents – have experienced at least one resident-to-resident abusive event.

This is a conundrum brought about by abysmally low pay to nursing home caregivers, and by Medicaid reimbursement rates so low it is difficult for nursing homes to stay in the black. The majority of nursing home residents are covered by Medicaid.

Here’s a blog I wrote showing nursing home workers are quitting to work at McDonald’s, where they get paid more and don’t have to mess with bedpans or possible back injuries.

The article mentions the double homicide at a nursing home not far from here. Here is a series of blogs I did about this event.

If you want to greatly increase the odds you will not wind up in a nursing home, you need to own long-term care insurance (LTCi). Most LTCi policyholders are able to remain at home or move to an assisted living facility, instead of a nursing home. The evidence is in a recent AHIP study sited here; ask and I will email the complete study to you.

TX Nursing Home Employees Quitting to Work at McDonald’s

April 12, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

According to reporters at Lubbock’s KLBK13, in a story titled, Nurses Quit Texas Nursing Homes to Work at McDonald’s, we face a dire shortage of nursing home beds by the end of this decade.

Nursing home employees, particularly certified nurse assistants, who are “front line” caregivers, get the worst pay, typically about $8/hour.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s is hiring, and they pay significantly more. Furthermore, their employees don’t have to mess with bed pans or risk injuries from transferring patients.

The story says TX nursing homes lose approximately $300 million per year. 85 percent of TX nursing home residents depend on Medicaid or Medicare. Each Medicaid patient is underfunded by 14 percent.

This dovetails with information I just received from Seven Acres, the Jewish nursing home here in Houston. Their April 2016 newsletter says, “Over 80% of our residents are so ill and indigent that they qualify for the state Medicaid program, which underfunds Seven Acres by $33,000 a year for each Medicaid resident. This translates into a $8 million annual loss for the Home. It is only through the generous support of our friends and community partners that we are able to offset the significant cost of care that Medicaid does not cover.”

Long-term care insurance (LTCi) ownership greatly increases the odds people will not receive care in a nursing home. Even the very best nursing homes – like Seven Acres – struggle with staffing shortages.

I’ve already sent Seven Acres my annual contribution.

Request a Free, No-Obligation LTCi Quote

The Latest Long Term Care Statistics – 2019 Update

Some Interesting Long Term Care Statistics

Maintaining Your Independence

Medicaid’s Woes Highlighted

One in Five Nursing Home Residents Report Abuse

TX Nursing Home Employees Quitting to Work at McDonald’s

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